WGC Mexico Championship 2019

WGC-Mexico Championship 2019 begins on Thursday at Club de Golf Chapultepec just outside Mexico City, and Tiger Woods will be in the field for the first time since the tournament moved to Mexico two years ago. It will be Woods’ third start of the 2018-19 PGA Tour season and the second of four WGC events this season. Woods is going off at 18-1 in the latest 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship odds, while last week’s runner-up in the Genesis Open, Justin Thomas, is the favorite at 9-1.

WGC Mexico Championship 2019 Live

Then there’s Xander Schauffele, who won the WGC-HSBC Champions last October in a playoff and is listed at 20-1 this week. The 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship tee times begin at 12:03 p.m. ET on Thursday from holes 1 and 10. Before you make your 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship picks or enter a PGA DFS tournament or cash game on sites like DraftKings and FanDuel, be sure to see the PGA predictions from the proven computer model at SportsLine.

SportsLine’s prediction model, which was built by DFS pro Mike McClure, has nailed four of the last eight majors entering the weekend and called Tiger Woods’ deep run in the PGA Championship despite being a 25-1 long shot. The model has been spot-on early in the 2018-19 season. It was high on champion Rickie Fowler at the 2019 Phoenix Open, projecting him as one of the top six contenders from the start. It also correctly predicted Brooks Koepka’s (9-1) victory at the CJ Cup earlier this season. Additionally, it correctly called Bryson DeChambeau’s (9-1) seven-shot victory at the 2019 Omega Dubai Desert Classic. Anyone who has followed the model is up huge.

Now that the field for the 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship is locked, SportsLine simulated the event 10,000 times, and the results were surprising. One huge shocker the model is calling for: Woods, a seven-time winner of this event, doesn’t even crack the top 10.

Woods is making just his second start in a World Golf Championship event since 2014. Last season, he finished 31st at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. And despite winning this tournament on seven different occasions, Woods is making his first competitive start in Mexico.

That doesn’t bode well for Woods, who will be playing a course that sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level. The significant elevation change will cause players to be accurate with their drives off the tee, an area where Woods struggled mightily last season. In fact, Woods finished last season ranked 127th on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy percentage (59.35). There are far better values to be had in this loaded WGC-Mexico Championship 2019 field.

Another surprise: Schauffele, a 20-1 long shot, makes a strong run at the title. He’s a target for anyone looking for a huge payday.

Schauffele already has two wins on the PGA Tour this season, taking down the first WGC event back in October and then winning the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii earlier this year. His Official World Golf Ranking has skyrocketed to No. 7 as a result and he’s leading the FedEx Cup standings, just ahead of Matt Kuchar, the only other two-time winner on tour so far this season.

The four-time PGA Tour winner and 2017 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year finished 18th in his first appearance at the WGC-Mexico Championship last season, so he’s had success at Club de Golf Chapultepec, which should play into how well-rounded his game has been lately. Schauffele is third on the PGA Tour in total strokes-gained at 2.363 per round. Look for him to be at or near the top of the 2019 WGC-Mexico leaderboard throughout the week.

Also, the model says three other golfers with 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship odds of 18-1 or longer make a strong run at the title. Anyone who backs these underdogs could hit it big.